Electron beam lithography (EBL), developed in the early 70's, provides a means for patterning polycrystalline metal nanowires as small as 20 nm in diameter onto surfaces. The applicability of EBL, however, has been limited to research and development applications because it is a serial patterning technology. In 1990, a parallel version of EBL was described, but space charge “blurring” prevented this technique from approaching the resolution of direct-write EBL. By using, as a template, semiconductor surfaces with atomically-defined grooves and troughs, sub-10 nm metal nanowires have been prepared using vapor deposition. A variant of this approach has been used to create high density arrays of linear, 10 nm diameter, platinum nanowires. We previously demonstrated that ensembles of 30 nm antimony nanowires can be prepared by electrochemical step edge decoration on graphite surfaces coupled with etching, but no control of nanowire position on the surface or inter-wire pitch has been possible using this method.
It is desirable to provide a method for preparing nanowires with the ability to control the position on the surface the nanowire is formed, as well as the inter-wire pitch.